Reply #4: Paper back announcement

[Gaedel]

The hard cover edition came out a few years back. It is a really interesting read. We always assume that the eeeeevul Europeans came in with tanks, machineguns, and bombers and wiped out the poor Indians living in sustainable, ecologically pure communities. It is really hard for us to grasp the truly devastating effects that small pox, diptheria, mumps, measles, and whooping cough have on a "virgin" population. In Europe and Asia, these diseases had been relegated to "childhood" diseases where a kid either survived or died 9and kids are easily replaceable (in the economic sense). Even children acquired some degree of immunity to these diseases from their mother's milk. With a virgin population, the diseases wipe out the adult breeding population with disastrous demographic effects. Get a copy of "Plagues and Peoples" by McNeil for a good read on the effects of communicable disease on world history.